


Uncertainties left to know

by Morbane



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 12:53:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17725553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: It's during times of chaos that they fit most easily into each other's lives.





	Uncertainties left to know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



> Thank you to primeideal and weakinteraction for tweaks - remaining infelicities are entirely my own.

She did not want to dwell on the circumstances. Her friend was in need, and it wasn't often that that happened. Florence had made a point of _not_ making friends in desperation, friends with demands. Life was for her goals or it was for her survival. She did not like to be treated as if she had some of herself to spare. Of course, Freddie had treated her as if she were a well that would never run dry, and Anatoly had flattered her only by pretending not to do the same. But that, at the time, had been something she told herself she wanted.

In any case, Florence Vassy had never expected to find herself sole caretaker to a baby. Only for a week, while her friend, the boy's mother, was in hospital, but such a week: such a cursed week that Freddie Trumper also chose that week to call on her, "Just passing through, though I know you won't mind me staying." She resented the assumption that she had space in her house and her life for him. It warmed her, too.

She was blunt with him, expecting him to retreat to his circuits - though he moved more slowly across the world than he had once; travel was not as kind to him - pop up next in a large city like New York, Philadelphia, San Diego. Instead, he came anyway. She wondered if he thought caring for an infant was no more demanding than caring for a large pet. Very well; let him see for himself.

She opened the door to her friend's apartment building with one arm - "Freddie, hello," and hurried back with Ethan to the changing table. By the time he'd made it up the stairs with his suitcase, she was almost done; she looked up to see him come in the door and look around. The place was little, but respectable, and too expensive with it; it had been small but manageable for her friend and her friend's husband, until the husband walked out. (She didn't think about having been on the other side of that. Some indulgences cost too much).

Freddie took in the domestic chaos, slowly. He put his suitcase down in the middle of the floor and his coat over a chair. "I'll get myself some water," he said, as though doing her a favour. "Pour one for me. The glasses are just to your left," she said, calling the bluff. She smiled, a little chagrined that after all this time she knew so well the difference between when he was actually put out and when he was just testing her own mood.

There was something that made sense about the two of them standing together in someone else's house, surrounded by other people's lives.

He went out and got them pizza. She called Ethan's mother to give her the daily update.

There was only one bed, and there was no sofa, only a loveseat that could barely sit two and certainly not sleep one. She did not offer him something makeshift; if he did not have a hotel, if he could not afford a motel, she did not want to know. She didn't want to encourage him to stay. But they'd slept in the same bed in hotels before, and she did not tell him he could not do so now.

Ethan woke up three times during the night. "Stay," Florence told Freddie curtly, shrugging her shoulder out from under his hand. The third time, Ethan only went back to sleep after half an hour of fussing, and if Freddie had disturbed her sleep by holding on to her too tightly she would have kicked him to the floor.

She slept in. Freddie was by the window, holding Ethan, jogging him a little, when she woke. The child's face was rapt, fascinated. She thought _You always had a gift for commanding attention,_ and could have said it, too, but today's wisdom was to let the moment pass, and close her eyes again instead.

He left not that day, but the next. A week later, she thought of things she could have asked about, and told him, but so many of their conversations were feints; it pleased her to think of this game, for once, attrited to a pawn's progress across the board, flanked by two unlikely guardians.


End file.
